It’s somewhere near miraculous that I’ve held on to my job this long. When readers first poured in to this site, I never thought I would still be maintaining the blog six months later. It was a fact then, and is now, that any day at work could hold some climactic scene involving a grim Seventh Seal-esque summoning to the hiring partner’s office, in which I’m sternly informed of my excommunication from the Church of White Collar Orthodoxy and escorted from the building by swarthy security hulks in oversized blue blazers. For the first few months, I kept this image at bay, never truly internalizing the episode’s likelihood. I rode the wave of excitement, even enjoyed the hint of danger - maybe I’ll be “outed” today, wouldn’t that be avant garde. Anything to brighten the dismal tedium of partner debasement and endless billable hours. The actual possibility of being found out seemed at best remote. In my naivete, I assumed that no animate human being would seriously spend hours of his life poring through old blog posts and performing great feats of information dissection and inquiry to figure out who I was. I mean honestly, who the hell cares about the name of some random girl who writes a blog?

Then shit hit the proverbial employment fan for a few friends and suddenly I realized I was lucky that not many Manhattan lawyers have close media connections. At least, not many that would willingly speak to them anyway. When the actual threats started, they jolted like live wires frying my warm and happy little blogger cocoon. Typically, they arrive every month or so in my blog inbox or even my work account, always from a fake or anonymous email address, containing epistolary gems along the lines of: “I know who you are and I could tell the partners at your firm and get you fired so now I have some semblance of power over an actual breathing person despite the fact that I am and shall always remain a parasitic barnacle on the putrid unscrubbed ass of humanity, Mwuhahahaha.” (ok I added the last part). Here’s the most recent in the string, this time from another Manhattan law firm associate/blogger:

I do know who you are. At least i’m nearly 100% certain, having read the inadvertent hints in your blog for some time now. Despite how careful you are, you can’t be careful enough….

That said, I would appreciate it if you would consider linking to me in your links category. I have had a link to you on my site for some time and understand that you can’t link to everyone who links to you because you don’t have enough space, but I thought I’d ask. Please consider my request. Thanks.

Threats in exchange for a link - a new alltime low, even for the consummate seediness of the blogosphere. At least he says Thank You - a polite attempt at cyberblackmail for a change. I edited out the paragraph in which he insists that he’s really not a stalker, just extremely “bored at work.” I wonder if Stalking Time is billable - maybe it goes in the Firm General account. For the record, I’ve decided to take a lesson from U.S. foreign policy and not negotiate with any link-seeking identity terrorists.

I can laugh at these emails in all their desperate pathos. But I can’t ignore the truth behind them. Far more people than I would like know who I am, and are more than willing to see me kicked to the curb of this highly-patrolled legal interstate. By now it’s become a countdown, a literal foregone conclusion that at some point I will be outed and fired. The longer I continue to blog, the uglier the scene will be. I’m not afraid of inevitable expulsion from law firm life - living in fear is enormously draining and highly overrated, I gave it up months ago. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, at least the whole lawyer/blogger duo.

So why continue blogging, knowing that it’s a virtual time bomb? Friends have told me I’m fall-down insane, others have applauded my efforts. Maybe it’s the petulant, rebellious teen finally surfacing after all those years of foregoing creativity in favor of the socially-preferred high-prestige carrot. Maybe I’m passive aggressively waiting to get canned so my decision to leave (while already made) will be cemented for me. Regardless of reasons, I won’t stop blogging, and I’ll keep writing the same posts I always have for as long as I can keep it going. But it’s safe to say that my time in this role of anonymous associate may not last much longer. I figure, what’s the worst case scenario? I get outed, fired and blacklisted from a world that instinctively turns my stomach into a caustic vat of bile. There are far worse things.